


Sleep Holds No Respite Anymore

by Felle_DesignWorks (Felle)



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19287874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Felle/pseuds/Felle_DesignWorks
Summary: With her nightmares about the fall of Beacon, it's a wonder Yang manages to sleep at all.





	Sleep Holds No Respite Anymore

Beacon was burning around her.

Yang stumbled through the wreckage left by the Grimm and the White Fang, drawn by painfully familiar screams. Every muscle in her body burned from fighting off attackers and negotiating debris, with the world almost seeming to twist around her. A pit formed in her stomach as the screams drew closer, from the very building she was trying to find a way into. Finally she kicked out a window and nearly fell sick at the sight laid out before her.

One of the White Fang leaders was pulling a long blade, red from both its finish and the blood covering it, out of Blake, whose screams descended into slow, sickening gurgles. Ruby was cut half to ribbons beside her, and Weiss—oh, Weiss, she could hardly see through the tears—had had her head gruesomely separated from her neck. All of their eyes were open, staring at her, mouths still moving under their own power, calling out to her in a chorus. _Why didn’t you save us_ , they asked over and over. _Why didn’t you save us, Yang?_

 _I’m sorry_ , she wanted to say, but her voice was gone, and no matter how she tried to tear herself away, there was no mistaking every last detail. The stench of blood and burnt flesh searing into her nose. All the cuts carved into her teammates, the agony written on their faces, the shrill blame in their voices as they called out to her. _I’m sorry_.

The White Fang leader was in front of her, suddenly, and she tried to throw a punch to crush his masked face. Her fist never connected, though, and his blade sank harshly through her gut without resistance. The steel bit into her skin and speared her to the wall behind her, radiating a blinding pain all throughout her body. She tried to yell, but nothing came out of her mouth other than a slow, thin trickle of blood.

“Why did you think that would work?” the White Fang leader asked, sneering at her from under his mask. His voice was harsh and foreboding, burning into her as she started to sink and cut herself along his blade. “I already took that away.”

Sure enough, her arm was simply…gone when she looked, nothing but a bloody stump under her elbow. Yang threw it out wildly, trying to connect as tears streamed down her face, but he only laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed as she sank further down, until the blade cut through her shoulder and left her nearly bisected. His skin began to break even as he cackled, and a Beowolf emerged, roaring, pale orange eyes transfixed on her as its maw wrapped around her head and began to bite.

Yang awoke in a cold sweat, chest pounding, a cry strangled in her throat, and very nearly punching Weiss as she stood over her but for the fact that there was simply no arm to punch with. The tension in her body dropped, and she looked over at her nightstand, where her prosthetic lay harmlessly in its charging port. She gasped and blinked away some tears as Weiss descended on her. “It’s okay,” she said into the crook of Yang’s shoulder. “It was only a nightmare, you’re safe. I’ve got you.”

Her remaining hand clawed at Weiss’s back, searching for some point of familiarity while her mind still sloshed through the images it had concocted. Yang reached up to touch at Weiss’s neck, making sure it was still in one piece.

She wasn’t sure how long it took her to calm down, but Weiss didn’t hurry her. One knee rested on Yang’s bedside to keep her steady while they held each other, Weiss stroking soothingly at Yang’s back. “It’s all right,” she finally said. “It’s going to be all right. What can I do for you?”

Weiss unwrapped her arms and eased back, letting Yang look around the room. There was a dim light coming from the glyphs over the door and windows, safely shutting them off from the outside world. Dawn was still a ways off, according to the alarm clock. Yang shook her head. “I’m all right, go back to sleep. Sorry for waking you.”

Yang shuffled back into a sleeping position. Weiss looked like she was about to say something, but only nodded and went back to her bed. She wished she had taken more of her father’s Emergency Uncle Qrow Whiskey before leaving home, as being good and drunk seemed to be the only thing that granted her any respite. As it was, with what little money she and Weiss had between them, she would just have to suffer through it and hope her mind could knit itself back together sooner rather than later.

Sleep didn’t return. Yang tried sprawling herself out, then curling up tight, tossing and turning, but nothing she did seemed to calm her down. For a moment she thought of asking Weiss to come back, asking her to let Yang lay her head in her lap until she fell asleep, but there was no point in disturbing her when she had probably already drifted off. Maybe if she could find something to latch onto—

“Move over,” Weiss said.

Her footfalls were so quiet Yang hadn’t even heard her moving between their beds. She did as she was told, shuffling to the other side and giving Weiss room to climb in. It had been a long time since she’d shared a bed, but Yang was surprised at how foreign it _didn’t_ feel. Weiss’s presence was easy and comfortable beside her. It made sense, they had been sleeping beside one another for weeks, being a bit closer didn’t make much of a difference. Her hand rested on Yang’s waist. “There’s not really enough space to leave room between us, so do you want to be the little spoon, or…I liked to be the big spoon when I did this for Ruby.”

“No spoons,” Weiss said, and nestled face to face with Yang. Her hand wound slowly up and down Yang’s back, a soothing motion that reminded her of the way her mother—her real mother, not her glorified egg donor—would calm her down at night or after a tantrum. Her eyes began to grow heavy. “My sister used to do this for me when we were younger, when our parents would fight. And our mother used to do it for her, before she started drinking to keep herself numb all the time. Her singing voice is awful, but she used to try singing the old lullaby Mom taught her.”

Weiss, thankfully, was better at carrying a tune than her sister, and the hum of the melody made Yang’s heart beat a little easier. Even as she calmed, though, tears massed at the corners of her eyes. She was the strong one on their team, or she had been, holding things together and keeping her teammates safe. That was what they looked to her for.

She needed a few minutes to be weak.

A high, whining sob cracked out of her throat, and the dam burst after that. Yang sobbed into Weiss’s shoulder as everything since Beacon came spilling out in an uncontrollable tumult. Weiss held her tight through it all. “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she repeated in between bars of her lullaby. “I’ve got you.”

There came a point when she cried herself out, and the dry heaves began to hurt her chest. Yang finally sniffled and whimpered herself to sleep with Weiss still fastened around her, and for once she managed to escape her nightmares. She dreamed of mountains, and gentle snow.

Weiss was still in her bed when she woke at dawn, playing a game on her scroll with one hand while keeping the other stuck firmly to Yang’s shoulder. They didn’t discuss it as they washed and dressed, nor as they fixed a meager breakfast for themselves. All that was different, Yang noticed, was that Weiss was much freer with physical contact than she had ever been. She wasn’t latched on, exactly, but she seemed to think nothing of light, casual touches as they moved around one another to make the food. Her fingers drifting fleetingly across Yang’s back, or standing close enough that their sides bumped into each other. Yang was grateful for it, and for Weiss not bringing it up.

⁂

They made good time to Mistral with a restful night’s sleep behind them, and they were fortunate to find another inn to spend the night rather than taking their chances out in the wilderness. When they settled in for the evening, Weiss barred all the possible entrances with glyphs before slipping into her nightgown. Yang fixed her gaze on the opposite wall while she detached her prosthetic, intent on giving her some privacy. She winced when the nerves disconnected, then turned around when something settled on the other side of the bed.

“You liked being the big spoon, right?” Weiss asked. Yang nodded and pulled the sheets back so they could crawl in.

Without a nightmare to shake off, Yang was able to focus on the coolness radiating from Weiss, and the comfort of having someone held against her. She was taller than Ruby, and had more hair to tickle at Yang’s nose, but the differences didn’t detract at all from the soothing feeling of her touch, Weiss’s hands laid over her own.

Just when she was about to drift off, though, a sound snapped her back into focus. Yang looked around for whatever it was before realizing it was right in front of her, coming from Weiss. She was…chuckling? Yang nudged her shoulder to get her attention. “What’s up? Am I tickling you?”

“No, it’s not that. I was just thinking,” Weiss said, and shuffled her way back until her whole body was pressing up against Yang’s. “It’s funny how hard it is, trying not to hear my father’s voice in my head even when the only sound here is your breathing. Seeing you with your mom made me think of it, how parents mess us up.”

“That woman is _not_ my mother,” Yang growled.

“Right, um, Raven, then. But it was the same kind of thing, only he was around all the time to keep reminding me. Don’t care about other people, especially Faunus, unless you get something from it. Don’t show any weakness in case someone else uses it against you. Don’t cry, don’t be vulnerable, don’t fail. Don’t let anyone see you suffering or straining, because nothing counts if it’s not perfect.”

She trembled suddenly, and Yang shuffled backward to turn her over. In the dim light from the glyphs she saw that Weiss was silently crying. The tears simply streamed down her face without a sound. Yang’s heart broke. All those years under her father’s thumb had left her with nothing to do with her weakness but try and vent it as quickly and as subtly as she could. Her old _ice queen_ comments at Beacon took on a new and shameful tinge. Weiss tried to turn away again, to hide herself away if she couldn’t put up a perfect, hypercompetent image, but Yang held her close instead. “It’s all right, you’re safe here,” Yang said, and pressed one soft kiss to Weiss’s forehead as she stroked her back. “You’ve got me and I’ve got you, right?”

Weiss’s lower lip wavered, as if she was trying to hold back and puzzle out if it was some kind of trick, but a whimper broke out of her soon enough. Yang had never heard Weiss cry before, but she was _loud_ , and Yang was glad that they were the only guests for the night. Weiss bawled into her chest, making up for eighteen years of having to be a perfect doll, curling against Yang while she burned herself out. With only one full arm Yang couldn’t hold her quite as tightly as she would have liked, but she did her best, humming Weiss’s lullaby as she did, until both of them calmed enough to drift off.

⁂

Their accommodations for the night had an unfortunately-placed window, and Yang hissed as she came to with a bar of sunlight resting on her eyes. She flopped onto her back and yawned, dimly aware that something was on top of her stump. _Ah_ , Yang thought as she looked to her right. Her arm was nestled under Weiss’s neck, providing some support between her shoulder and the pillow.

Once she had carefully dislodged her arm, Weiss rolled over to get the sun out of her eyes. She still looked to be asleep, lips ever so slightly parted and blowing some loose strands of hair with her breath. Yang propped herself up on her elbow and looked at her. It wasn’t that she’d never been aware Weiss was pretty, anyone could see that. But it had always been an icy, perfectly put together kind of pretty, where now it was a messy, casual pretty. Less an impenetrable façade and more a moment of softness.

Yang didn’t really think about _why_ she was doing it, except that it felt right as she leaned down and left one soft kiss on Weiss’s forehead. Some of the feeling turned to guilt when she eased back, wondering how much she would want an unsolicited kiss first thing in the morning before she’d had a chance to put herself together. Weiss’s lips creased into a frown and her eyes fluttered open. Yang grimaced and started rehearsing an apology. Sleeping beside Weiss had kept her nightmares away all night, she would hate to ruin that over a moment of absentmindedness.

“When will you learn to do things properly,” Weiss grumbled, and pulled her down into a real kiss. Yang started in surprise, half-convinced she was still asleep and her mind’s version of Weiss was just giving rise to thoughts she had long since tamped down. It was all much too real for that, though, and Yang decided to make the most of it, dream or not. Her arm wrapped around Weiss’s waist as she kissed her back, and it still felt very real when they broke for air. Weiss rested her forehead against Yang’s. “It seems like you wanted to do that for a while.”

“This is real, right?” Yang asked, so softly she wasn’t sure she wanted Weiss to hear her.

“Feels real to me.”

Yang brushed some hair from Weiss’s face and looked at the glyph on the door, still spinning in place. They didn’t have to get up for a while yet.


End file.
